Andrew Cuomo served as HUD Secretary from January 29, 1997, through January 20, 2001, the 11th person to lead the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the last Cabinet-level housing official of the Clinton administration.1U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. HUD Archives – Secretary Andrew Cuomo The Senate confirmed him 99–0. He had already worked inside the department since 1993 as Assistant Secretary for Community Planning and Development, running community development, affordable housing, and homeless programs.2U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Andrew M. Cuomo His four years as Secretary produced a sweeping internal reorganization, new mortgage mandates on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, record homeownership figures, expanded homelessness and fair-housing programs, and financial-management problems that auditors were still trying to untangle when he left office.
The HUD 2020 Reorganization
Cuomo inherited an agency some members of Congress wanted to abolish. His answer was the HUD 2020 Management Reform Plan, launched in June 1997, which reorganized field offices, centralized financial operations, and automated routine work.3U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. HUD 2020 Management Reform Plan Executive Summary The headline goal was cutting the workforce from roughly 10,500 employees to about 7,500 through attrition and consolidations, with the target date initially 2000 and later extended to 2002.4U.S. Government Accountability Office. Information on HUD’s 2020 Management Reform Plan The pitch to Congress was that HUD could run lean and still deliver.
Affordable Housing Mandates for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac
The most consequential decision of Cuomo’s tenure involved the two government-sponsored enterprises that dominate the secondary mortgage market. Under the Federal Housing Enterprises Financial Safety and Soundness Act of 1992, HUD set annual goals dictating what share of the mortgages Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac purchased had to come from lower-income borrowers.5Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 12 USC 4561 – Establishment of Housing Goals In October 1999, Cuomo raised that threshold from 42 percent to 50 percent, effective in 2001.6U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Cuomo Announces Action to Provide $2.4 Trillion in Mortgages for Affordable Housing
HUD framed the change as a route to $2.4 trillion in private mortgage capital that would help 28.1 million families afford homes over the following decade.6U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Cuomo Announces Action to Provide $2.4 Trillion in Mortgages for Affordable Housing A separate special affordable housing goal targeted very low-income families and borrowers in neighborhoods with limited access to credit. Fannie and Freddie had to report progress annually, and the mandates pushed them toward loan products they might otherwise have avoided.
The Subprime Debate That Followed
After the 2008 financial crisis, those mandates became one of the most argued-over pieces of Cuomo’s record. Critics said forcing the enterprises to buy larger volumes of lower-income mortgages loosened underwriting standards across the industry. Even in 1999, some financial analysts warned the expansion carried risk that would surface in a downturn.
Defenders pointed out that Fannie and Freddie mostly financed conforming prime mortgages, not the exotic subprime products that produced the worst losses. Academic work on loan-level data from 2006 and 2007 found the goals modestly increased GSE purchases from very low-income borrowers but did not appear to increase overall lending to underserved populations; researchers concluded the goals were often set below the levels the enterprises were already hitting, making them largely non-binding in practice. Congress moved the housing-goals authority away from HUD entirely under the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008, transferring it to the new Federal Housing Finance Agency.
Homelessness and the Continuum of Care
HUD expanded the Continuum of Care model it had first developed in 1994, which required local governments, nonprofits, faith organizations, and service providers to jointly assess homeless needs and submit a unified plan for federal funding rather than compete individually. By 1999, the program had helped more than 300,000 homeless people obtain housing and employment. Transitional housing for homeless families rose 16 percent in a single year, and single-room-occupancy housing grew 5 percent. HUD reported that 76 percent of homeless families and 60 percent of homeless single individuals who received housing assistance and supportive services ended their homelessness after finishing the program. Clinton-era spending on homeless assistance came to nearly $5 billion, more than triple the $1.5 billion spent between 1987 and 1993.7U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Cuomo Says Mayors Survey Shows HUD’s Continuum of Care is Working
HOPE VI and Public Housing
HOPE VI predated Cuomo but became a signature tool for tearing down the worst federal housing projects and replacing them with lower-density, mixed-income developments. By the end of fiscal year 1999, the program had received $3.5 billion in federal funding and leveraged an additional $4.1 billion in outside investment, with approved demolition of 53,000 public housing units across 124 communities and plans for 35,000 new public housing units plus 25,000 additional mixed-income units.8HUD USER. HOPE VI – Building Communities Transforming Lives Only local public housing authorities could apply for grants, and many projects relied on public-private partnerships financed through the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit.
Across its lifetime, HOPE VI ultimately demolished about 98,600 public housing units between 1993 and 2010 and produced roughly 97,400 mixed-income units, 57 percent of them replacement public housing. It drew steady criticism for displacing existing residents who often could not afford to return to the rebuilt developments.
Fair Housing Enforcement
HUD under Cuomo took a more aggressive posture on housing discrimination. The department expanded testing programs, in which individuals posed as prospective buyers or renters to catch biased behavior by landlords, agents, and lenders, and reported doubling the number of fair housing enforcement actions compared to prior administrations. The Fair Housing Initiatives Program funded private nonprofits to run their own investigations and bring evidence to HUD, which could pursue administrative enforcement or refer serious cases to the Justice Department.9HUD Exchange. HUD’s Implementing Regulations – 24 CFR Part 125 – Fair Housing Initiatives Program
In cases brought by the Attorney General under the Fair Housing Act, courts could assess civil penalties of up to $50,000 for a first violation and up to $100,000 for any subsequent violation.10Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 42 USC 3614 – Enforcement by Attorney General Those statutory amounts have since been adjusted upward for inflation. Administrative penalties assessed by HUD’s own judges carried lower caps. Settlements during this period reached tens of millions of dollars, and many required lenders and landlords to change future marketing and approval practices, not simply pay damages.
Record Homeownership Numbers
The late-1990s economy gave HUD a favorable backdrop for its homeownership push. Between 1992 and 1999, more than 8.7 million households became homeowners, and the national homeownership rate climbed to 66.8 percent, reaching an all-time high of 67.1 percent in the first quarter of 2000. Urban homeownership broke 50 percent for the first time. Minority homeownership rose substantially: 47.8 percent of Black households and 45.7 percent of Hispanic households owned their homes by early 2000. The Federal Housing Administration insured a record 1.3 million mortgages worth $124 billion in 1999 alone.11U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. State of the Cities 2000 How much of the growth reflected HUD policy versus the broader economy is hard to separate, but the numbers gave the department something it needed at a moment when its critics wanted it closed.
The Community Builders Initiative
Cuomo’s Community Builders program placed 787 people, including 406 Community Builder Fellows on two-year contracts, across HUD’s 81 field offices to act as liaisons between Washington and local governments, nonprofits, and neighborhood groups.12U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Report on the Community Builder Program The idea was that a small housing authority or rural county would have someone to walk them through the application process rather than face federal regulations alone.
The initiative drew both praise and criticism. An internal HUD analysis reviewed 718 case studies but had trouble measuring results against costs.13U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Analysis of Community Builder Program Report Congressional critics questioned whether the salaries paid to temporary Fellows were justified, and the Inspector General later flagged oversight weaknesses in the program’s budget.
Financial Management Failures
The counterweight to Cuomo’s reform narrative sat in HUD’s own books. The Office of Inspector General tried to audit the department’s fiscal year 1999 financial statements and issued a disclaimer of opinion, meaning auditors could not complete the audit because the underlying records were too unreliable.14U.S. Government Accountability Office. HUD Management – Status of Actions to Resolve Serious Financial Management Problems
A new departmentwide general ledger system implemented in fiscal year 1999 badly disrupted HUD’s ability to produce accurate statements. Reconciling the department’s books with the U.S. Treasury required 242 adjustments totaling roughly $59.6 billion to make fiscal year 1999 balances agree, plus another 42 adjustments totaling about $17.6 billion to correct the prior year’s ending balances. Significant unexplained differences remained even after those fixes. Thirteen of HUD’s eighteen financial systems failed to meet the standards set by the Federal Managers’ Financial Integrity Act, and the department’s financial systems integration project suffered repeated changes in scope, strategy, and leadership.14U.S. Government Accountability Office. HUD Management – Status of Actions to Resolve Serious Financial Management Problems
The $59.6 billion figure did not mean that amount was missing or misspent; it measured how many accounting entries had to be corrected to make the books balance. The scale of the reconciliation problem still cut against the case that HUD 2020 had produced a modernized, efficient agency. That tension defines the Cuomo years at HUD: ambitious policy on housing goals, homelessness, public housing redevelopment, and fair housing, paired with an internal infrastructure that could not always track where the money was going, and a mortgage policy whose consequences would be argued about long after he left the building.